Every Nolan Movie Drinking Game, Ranked by Brain Damage
Christopher Nolan has made twelve films. We have drinking games for ten of them. The other two are Following and Insomnia, and honestly if you're watching those at a party, you're hosting a different kind of party.
We ranked the ten by brain damage. Not liver damage. Brain damage. How confused will you be when the credits roll? How many times will your group pause the movie to argue about what just happened? Nolan's whole thing is making you feel smart for understanding the movie and dumb for not understanding it at the same time. The drinking games lean into that.
Grab your cocktail. Try to keep up.
10. Batman Begins
The most straightforward Nolan film, which is like saying the driest part of the ocean. The game tracks Bruce Wayne's training montage moments, the Scarecrow's toxin scenes, and Ra's al Ghul's philosophical monologues. You'll sip when the bats swarm and drink when someone says "it's not who I am underneath." Easy night. Good warmup for what comes later.
Play the Batman Begins Drinking Game
9. Dunkirk
Three timelines running at three different speeds. On paper, that's confusing. In practice, the movie is so visceral and loud that the drinking game runs on adrenaline more than brain power. Sip when the Spitfire engine roars. Drink when the tide comes in. The game is physical, not cerebral. You'll be tense and buzzing, but you won't be confused.
Play the Dunkirk Drinking Game
8. The Dark Knight Rises
Bane's voice. That's the whole game. Sip every time Bane says something that sounds profound but might also be nonsense through that mask. The game tracks the pit escape, Catwoman's double-crosses, and every time someone in Gotham makes a terrible decision. The final act stacks fast. The bomb countdown is a drink-twice that turns the room nervous.
Play the Dark Knight Rises Drinking Game
7. The Dark Knight
The Joker makes this game unpredictable in the best way. Every time he does the lip-lick, sip. Every magic trick, drink twice. The pencil scene is a shot that nobody is ever ready for even when they know it's coming. The game's intensity tracks the movie perfectly: steady build, then Harvey Dent flips a coin and everything falls apart.
Play The Dark Knight Drinking Game
6. Oppenheimer
Three hours. Two timelines. Color for Oppenheimer's perspective. Black and white for Strauss. The drinking game tracks every cigarette, every physicist name-drop, every vision of particles and fire. The hearing scenes create a rhythm you get used to. Then the Trinity test goes off and the room goes quiet. The game isn't confusing, but it is heavy.
Play the Oppenheimer Drinking Game
5. Interstellar
The drinking game feels manageable for the first hour. Cooper's on a farm. TARS makes jokes. Zimmer's organ swells. Then you hit Miller's planet and the time dilation kicks in and suddenly the sip rules are firing faster because everything is happening at once. Cooper watching the video messages is a drink-twice that will make your group go silent. The tesseract scene is a shot that rewards you for surviving the whole film.
Play the Interstellar Drinking Game
4. The Prestige
Dual timelines. Journals within journals. A magic trick with three acts that the movie itself follows. The drinking game asks you to track who's reading whose diary and whether the scene you're watching is the past or the present. Every time you think you understand the structure, a top hat shows up where it shouldn't. The reveal at the end reframes every rule you already triggered.
Play The Prestige Drinking Game
3. Inception
Dream within a dream within a dream within a snow fortress. The sip rules fire at every level. The BWAAAAM horn alone will keep you busy. But the real brain damage comes from trying to remember which dream level you're on while the kick countdown is happening across all of them simultaneously. Arthur's zero-gravity hallway fight is a shot. The spinning top at the end is a chug that will start an argument that lasts longer than the movie.
Play the Inception Drinking Game
2. Memento
The movie runs backward. The drinking game runs backward. Every time you think you understand what happened, the next scene shows you that you didn't. Leonard checks his Polaroids. You take a sip. He reads his tattoos. You take another. The black-and-white phone scenes break up the confusion just enough to make you think you've caught up. You haven't. By the time the timelines converge, you'll have forgotten how many drinks you've had, which is kind of the point.
Play the Memento Drinking Game
1. Tenet
Nobody fully understands Tenet. Not the first time. Not the third time. Probably not ever. The drinking game fires on inverted bullets, oxygen masks, turnstiles, and temporal pincers. Half the rules trigger twice because the same scene plays forward and then backward. The Protagonist fights himself in a hallway and you have to drink for both of them. Neil walks into that tunnel at the end and the chug hits you right in the chest. You will finish this game confused, emotional, and slightly drunk. That's the Nolan special.
The Nolan Cocktail Menu
| Film | Cocktail | Spirit |
|------|----------|--------|
| Memento | The Polaroid | Bourbon |
| Batman Begins | Ra's Resurrection | - |
| The Prestige | The Transported Man | Gin |
| The Dark Knight | The Harvey Two-Face | - |
| Inception | The Totem Spin | Gin |
| The Dark Knight Rises | The Pit Climber | - |
| Interstellar | The Endurance | Gin |
| Dunkirk | Moonstone Mule | - |
| Tenet | The Temporal Pincer | Rye |
| Oppenheimer | The Trinity | Mezcal |
Gin dominates the list because Nolan keeps going to space and bending physics, and gin is what you drink when reality gets botanical. The mezcal for Oppenheimer is the outlier. It fits.
How to Run a Nolan Marathon
Don't try all ten. Your brain can't handle it. Pick three.
The Mind-Bender: Memento + Inception + Tenet. Three different kinds of confused. Three different decades. You won't know what year it is when you're done.
The Blockbuster Run: Batman Begins + The Dark Knight + The Dark Knight Rises. The whole trilogy in one night. The game escalates with each film. You'll feel like you climbed out of the pit by the end.
The Prestige Package: The Prestige + Interstellar + Oppenheimer. Science, obsession, and moral weight. These are the Nolan films that stick with you for days. The cocktails are the best of the collection.
Browse all our Sci-Fi & Fantasy drinking games or explore the full Cult Classics & Quotable collection.